


Forged

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BASICALLY THEY LOVE ARYA/GENDRY BECAUSE I LOVE ARYA/GENDRY AND IT'S ARYA/GENDRY JUBILEE DAY, F/M, THIS IS POINTLESS AND SELF-INDULGENT LEAVE ME IN MY TRASH PILE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 06:18:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18565654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: There are several reasons that Ben would never have dreamed he’d ever  receive this text. The first is that he’d be invited to a Halloween party.  The second is that he’d never in his life expected to be in a serious relationship, much less the sort of serious relationship where his partner would suggest matching Halloween costumes.  And the last is that he is dating someone who’s show only and they’ve only almost murdered one another twice. Because he’s anA Song of Ice and Firefan.  Hehates Game of Thrones.





	Forged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dalzo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalzo/gifts).



> this is.
> 
> literally the most self-indulgent thing i have ever written.
> 
> and i'm not gonna apologize for it.

_ We could go as Arya and Gendry. _

Ben stares at his phone for a full forty seconds.

There are several reasons that Ben would never have dreamed he’d ever  receive this text. The first is that he’d be invited to a Halloween party.  The second is that he’d never in his life expected to be in a serious relationship, much less the sort of serious relationship where his partner would suggest matching Halloween costumes.  And the last is that he is dating someone who’s show only and they’ve only almost murdered one another twice. Because he’s an _A Song of Ice and Fire_ fan.  He _hates_ _Game of Thrones._

_ We could do for the forge scene. _

_ You know you want to. _

Ben smiles down at his phone.

_ Yeah, that could be good. _

Rey doesn’t wear dresses a lot.  In fact, she wears them very rarely.  They’re not practical, or they don’t fit her right.  But he sort of likes the idea of seeing her in that acorn dress.

_ Excellent.  That costume contest is ours. _

-

Ben found  _ A Song of Ice and Fire  _ when he was fifteen and angry.  It would be another seven years before the show came out and ruined everything forever.  He spent years on westeros.org, combing his copy of  _ A Feast for Crows _ for hints about whether or not the Hound was alive, got into knock-down drag-out fights about Jon’s parentage.  He trawled deviantart for fanart, and, whenever he was feeling low, read and reread and reread. He loves Tyrion for his moral grayness and his fucked to shit relationship with his family, he loves Jon’s resilience, but most of all, he loves Arya.  Arya and the way she can make him smile with something dry and witty even when she’s at her most miserable. Arya, who doesn’t feel like she belongs in her own life sometimes, but goddamn it does she try. Arya, who can make friends with anyone in a way that Ben can’t.

It doesn’t really surprise him that he gives Rey a chance.  They’re chatting on Twitter and she sort of rails him for being a book snob, and when he clicks over to her profile to see who the  _ fuck _ she is and how the  _ fuck _ dare she say that about Theon Greyjoy when he sees  _ Rey. 21. She/Her.  Arya is my queen, my one and only.  @d&d give me give me #forgesex. _

(He looks up what she means before replying, and finds himself reading through about 900 versions of the same scene: one in which Arya and Gendry are kissing in a forge, and then doing things that Arya’s probably too young to do in a Forge.  But that’s a canon problem. Ages get fucked up, Arya’s closer to twenty than ten, and yeah, he gets it, actors age, but come  _ on _ she’s supposed to be eleven at most right now.)

He doesn’t really remember what happens after that.  He could go into his Twitter DMs, he supposes, reread Rey reaming into him with the fury of someone who’s had to deal with enough fucking book snobs and not everyone has the time to read five fifteen-hundred word novels and yes she’s read the Wiki of Ice and Fire pages  and yes she knows who Stoneheart is so can he get off his fucking high horse and explain to her  _ why _ Missandei and Grey Worm is bad for the universe at large?

_ You’ve got to admit that the dialogue is just  _ bad  _ sometimes. _

_ Yeah, because I’m sure Martin’s prose is high art. _

She’s funny, smart, has a backbone of steel but most of all--

_ I’ve never felt so alone. _

Those little words hang in the texting window--because somehow he’d gotten her number, somehow they’d switched to texting, somehow she’s telling him about how her mentor was slowly destroying her confidence, and how she’s far away from her only friends, and how she sometimes worries that her parents were right to abandon her.

_ You’re not alone. _

He expects the response to be meaningful, comforting.

He doesn’t expect it to be quite as much of that as it was.

-

Rey still hasn’t read the books.

“Maybe when the show is over,” she tells him when he picks up his copy of  _ Fire and Blood _ , because he’s desperate for any content he can get, even if it’s historical Targaryen novellas--some of which he’s already read.  “I want to appreciate it fresh.”

So he shouldn’t be surprised when he meets her outside of Finn’s and Rose’s apartment and she’s not wearing an acorn dress.  That was probably too much for him to have hoped for. What’s weird is that she looks disappointed too.

“What?” he asks her.

“You’re supposed to be shirtless,” she says, brushing past him.  It looks a little bit like she’s wearing venetian blinds turned into a tunic. 

“You’re supposed to be wearing an acorn dress.”  She pauses and looks up at him, confused. “Acorn Hall?” he prompts.  “No featherbed for me? The whole fucking origin of your fucking forge sex kink?”

“My forge sex kink comes from shirtless Joe Dempsie in season two, thank you very much,” sniffs Rey.  

“I stopped watching after season one.”

“I know that,” Rey says, rolling her eyes.   “I wanted you shirtless all night.”

Ben looks down at his tunic.  He has no problem being shirtless around Rey.  The problem is that it’s almost November, and he’s about to be at a Halloween party full of people he’s pretty sure only tolerate him because Rey is dating him.  “No,” he says.

“Fine,” she  shrugs before rolling her eyes.  “I guess that one looks kind of like his season seven costume.  But if you were doing season seven, I could have too. This looks ridiculous.”

“I wasn’t doing season seven.  I was doing  _ A Storm of Swords _ .”

She pushes into Finn’s front door and Ben thinks he’s probably in deep shit for the rest of the night.  

-

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Rey grins, dragging him to wards the bar.

“I will want to set myself on fire,” Ben grumbles.

“You’ll be our ringer.  You know all the book answers, we’ll have all the show answers.  That free plate of Buffalo Chicken will be ours.”

Only for Rey will he go to  _ Game of Thrones _ trivia nights.  Only for Rey will he go to anything with  _ Game of Thrones _ in the marketing.  But to see Rey smile at him, to feel her hand slide into his when the quiz runner asks “What house is Theon’s mother from,” and Ben doesn’t even hesitate before scribbling  _ Harlaw (Alannys, or “Lanny” Harlaw)  _ on the paper before handing it back to Finn.  

Rey gives him a quick kiss on the cheek, and breathes into his ear, “I love how you just knew that off the top of your head.”

“There’s a whole chapter in  _ A Feast For Crows  _ about Asha going home to--”

“Asha’s Yara?”

“Kind of.”

“Ok, snob,” but she kisses him.  

“You turned me around on Grey Worm and Missandei,” he tells her.  He tells her this every time she calls him a snob. 

“Soon I’ll get you on Euron.”

“No, he’s supposed to be a drug-hazed, manipulative crazy man, with a sick fucking mind, not someone who--”

“He’s going to an MCR concert that’s why he’s got the guyliner on!”

“And to think they could have given him blue lips and an eyepatch.  That’s not over the top enough for them?”

“This is our version of dirty talk, isn’t it?” Rey murmurs as the quiz runner asks what castle Bronn wanted in season seven and Ben doesn’t even bother trying to work it out.

“Might be,” he replies.  

“Talk Blackfyre Rebellion to me, baby,” she croons, teasing  more than not, her hand now on his thigh. 

“Well,” he says, “Daemon Blackfyre was the son of…”

-

“I’m not actually annoyed at you,”  Rey says, sneaking up behind him and wrapping her arms  around his middle. She stands on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to his neck.  “You know me, I just like you shirtless.”

“I’m not letting you down?” he asks.  He’d been worried about it. He’s so used to letting everyone down.  He can’t bear it when it happens with Rey.

“Only if we don’t have forgesex later,” she murmurs.

He grins.

That, he thinks, he can manage.

-

“No but they need to be together,” Rey says on their second date, her eyes hard as steel as she  looks at him over their bread basket.

“Arya and Gendry.”

“Yes.”

“She’s a kid,” Ben says.

“She’s  _ not _ she’s like thirteen.  And it’s been a few seasons.  By the time he’s done rowing she’ll be old enough.”

“Yeah, but if the showrunners are pushing for Martin’s endgame, and he cut the five year timeskip, Arya really won’t be old enough to--”

“Listen--maybe he’ll have said  _ oh and this one thing.  They should bang. I couldn’t make it work, and it’s what Ned Stark would want. _ ”  Ben gives her a look.  She gives it right back.  

“Do you really trust them with it?” he asks.  “After what I  _ hear _ they did to--”

“Look, season fives are cursed.   Just look at  _ The West Wing _ .”   Ben snorts, and Rey digs in.  “The Battle of the Bastards was really good.  And Dany on dragonback is incredible. I have a good feeling about the last two seasons.”

“And that good feeling involves--”

“Arya and Gendry having sex.  Ideally in a forge. Because they’re perfect for one another.”   He doesn’t expect her to go on, doesn’t expect her to have any more depth to the opinion, but she gives him a somber look and does.   “She just wants her family back. And he could be her family. They trust one another so much, and believe in one another. And I think they’d do anything for one another.  He wouldn’t care that she’d murdered all those people, and that she did what she needed to do to survive. And she doesn’t care that he’s nothing from nowhere.”

Ben takes a sip of his wine.

And finds he can’t look away from her at all.

-

She shoves him onto the bed and strips off her own costume while he tugs off his shirt and unfastens his pants.  She’s so beautiful, his Rey, as she shimmies her pants down her legs. He loves the curve of her hips, the soft swell of her breasts, but most of all, he loves the crooked smile she gives him as she straddles his hips and bends her lips down to brush at his.

“Like what you see?”she teases as she rocks against him.  He’s already more than halfway to hard and when she does that…

“Always, m’lady,” he replies.   

“Good,” she says, pulling away and smirking down at him, her hands brushing over the muscles of his chest and abdomen.   

She rides him to oblivion and back, rides him until she’s breathless and flushed and whimpering,  rides him until she’s clutching him for balance more than anything else. And that’s when he rolls her onto her stomach and lines himself up behind her and slides back in and  god--he loves the sight of her back like this, her face pressed into the pillows, her hands gripping at sheets. The featherbed is on the floor, along with most of the blankets, and Ben leans down to whisper in her ear,  “My perfect little wolf bitch,” and she grins at him and half-bites towards his face as he pumps into her. 

“Not to be mounted by lesser wolves,” she whimpers out as he slams into her and his heart goes still and he stops moving.  Rey whines.

“Did you get that off the wiki?”

“I’ve been reading them on the train.  To try and get you to watch season eight with me when it airs.”

“So you  _ did _ know about Acorn Hall,”  he says, stunned. 

“Glad to know you didn’t see through my ruse.  The lying game is paying off.”

Impossibly, he grows harder.  Rey arches her spine back to him and he loses himself in the feeling of her, the feeling of getting what he wants without having to resort to taking, or begging, or threatening.  She wants him and he wants her. They fit so well together--her steely, icy stubbornness, his fire…

He collapses on top of her when he’s done, pressing her into the mattress and kissing into that nook at the intersection of her neck and shoulder.  

“They’re gonna bang in a forge next season. I just know it,” Rey mutters.

“If they don’t, we’ll find a way to do it on their behalf,” is all that Ben can think to say, fully aware of how dumb it sounds but somehow fully equipped to find a forge to do it in if necessary.

“I say we do it anyway,”  Rey says. “It was fun roleplay.”

Ben hums in agreement.  Rey wiggles a little underneath him and he rolls them onto their sides.  “Will you watch season eight with me?” she asks, a little shy.

Ben swallows.  “Yeah,” he says at last.  “Yeah, and I’ll try not to be an asshole about  it.”

And sure, he could just be saying it to make Rey kiss him like that, all tongue, and joy, and relief--but he also thinks he might just have meant it, too.


End file.
